BENGALURU: India’s third largest software exporter Wipro has initiated the process of putting a successor in place of current chief executive TK Kurien whose term ends in January next year. COO and former TCS top honcho Abid Ali Neemuchwala is being considered as a frontrunner to take over from Kurien early next year, according to three people familiar with the developments.

After his term as CEO ends, Kurien may move on to a different role, possibly that of vice chairman, where he will help the company with important futuristic strategic bets and decisions, said the people mentioned above. All of them requested anonymity as these discussions are confidential.

When contacted by ET, a Wipro spokesperson said that the company had not yet taken any such decision.

"The Board of Directors of Wipro Ltd has not taken any such decision. Any such decision will be taken by the Board of Directors based on the recommendation of the Nominations Committee and will be communicated to the stock exchanges. We don't want to comment any further on this speculation,” Wipro said in an email to ET.

The decision to consider Neemuchwala as a potential successor to Kurien comes amid an organizational overhaul being undertaken at the company that has already seen the departures of two company veterans within the space of a month.

Earlier in December, company veteran and former head of Wipro’s healthcare and life sciences business Sangita Singh quit from the company after over two decades at Wipro, weeks after former telecom and media business head Ayan Mukerji resigned from his position.

In an interview with ET earlier this year, Kurien had said that his term as CEO was not coming up for renewal and that it would be “a theoretical ending.”

“First, let me clarify—my term is not coming for renewal, it's ending and that's a theoretical ending. I think the bigger thing is that as far as Abid is concerned, clearly from our perspective, we have a slate of successors. And ultimately what we will do is we will make a choice of one. And that will be done over the course of the next couple of years. I don't think we are going to jump into doing that today. So, the answer is, if you are expecting an announcement on the succession right now, the answer is you are not going to get it,” Kurien had said in an interview with ET earlier this year.

ET had first reported on March 16 that Wipro would begin a process to identify and groom a successor to chief executive TK Kurien towards the end of 2015, with former TCS top executive Abid Ali Neemuchwala as one of the favorites to succeed Kurien as CEO, shortly before he was appointed chief operating officer of Wipro in March.

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